Technology

Amazon Prime Video is rolling out user profiles for family members and friends who share Prime accounts, the company announced today. Each account will allow for up to six user profiles. One profile will default as the primary account, with five additional profiles allowed. These can be regular accounts or kids accounts. The kids account will restrict what type of content is shown, similar to how other children’s accounts on streaming services like Netflix and HBO Max work. Amazon did not note how many profiles can stream at once, but The Verge has reached out for clarification. Profiles are linked through Amazon’s wallet sharing tool. The feature allows customers to share their payment methods with another Amazon account that has set up a household. (Here’s more info on how to do that.) A...

Samsung’s new Galaxy A71 5G UW is launching on July 16th. At $649, it will be the most affordable way to access Verizon’s 5G millimeter-wave network. Preorders for Verizon’s edition of the phone, which was announced last month, will begin on July 9th. The A71 5G UW has a 6.7-inch OLED display, 128GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and a 4,500mAh battery. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765G processor and features a quad-camera system — including a 64-megapixel main lens, 12-megapixel wide lens, 5-megapixel macro, and a 5-megapixel depth camera — as well as a 32-megapixel selfie shooter. Samsung’s Scene Optimizer, a feature of recent Galaxy phones, will try to detect what you’re photographing and automatically adjust settings (such as exposure and contrast) accordingly. Tests have found that ...

The US is considering a ban on Chinese social media apps like the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Monday. “We are taking this very seriously. We are certainly looking at it,” Pompeo said. “With respect to Chinese apps on peoples’ cellphones, the United States will get this one right too.” Over the last few years, US lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned over TikTok’s handling of user data and the relationship between its parent company — the Beijing-based ByteDance — and the Chinese government. Lawmakers allege that TikTok could be pressured into handing over data or other intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party. A TikTok spokesperson responded to Pompeo’s remarks Tuesday in a statement, writing “TikTok is led by an American ...

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for COVID-19, he announced today. He is 65 years old. Over the weekend, he attended a US Independence Day event with US Ambassador Todd Chapman. Neither Bolsonaro nor Chapman wore a mask at the event. Like US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has downplayed the risks and extent of the COIVD-19 pandemic and said that the danger was over-exaggerated by the media. Brazil now has the second-worst outbreak in the world, behind the United States. To date, there have been more than 1.6 million cases in the country and more than 65,000 people have died of the disease. Stores and businesses are fully reopened in cities around the country, and masks aren’t required. CNN Brasil reported Monday that Bolsonaro had a fever, which his office denied, ...

Samsung has announced a new 10W wireless charger that tops up your phone’s battery while sterilizing the device using UV-C light. The company says the ultraviolet light can kill 99 percent of bacteria and germs, though marketing materials don’t mention whether it destroys the novel coronavirus responsible for the current global pandemic. News of the charger first emerged last week from Samsung Thailand, but now the company has announced the product globally. Right now, we’ve seen pages for the product in Samsung’s German, Romanian, Singaporean, and Hong Kong stores. In Germany, it’s being sold for €58.38 (around $65). The announcement comes at a time when people are particularly worried about the spread of COVID-19, and products that claim to clean your phone and stop the virus are on the ...

Last week, the worlds of technology and journalism were transfixed by a conflict that played out across across Instagram, Twitter, and the upstart audio-only social network Clubhouse. One reason it generated so much attention — you can read thorough accounts from varying perspectives at Vice, on Quora, or this venture capitalist’s Substack — is that you can approach the drama from so many angles. But despite the best efforts of everyone here, I still think the most clarifying way to understand the story of Steph Korey, Taylor Lorenz, Balaji Srinivasan, venture capital, and Clubhouse has mostly gone unspoken. And those who fail to see it, I think, could be in for a rude awakening of their own. Let me start with a brief recounting of events — and acknowledge that I played a role in some of t...

Photos allegedly showing Samsung’s unannounced Galaxy Note 20 Ultra have been shared by YouTuber Jimmy Is Promo. The pictures could be the first real-life glimpse we’ve seen of the new Note series. Samsung tends to announce new Galaxy Note phones in August each year. Although we can’t verify the images, they show a very similar device to one that was leaked earlier this month on Samsung’s own website. They also include a view of the front of the phone for the first time, showing a centered hole-punch notch at the top of the display. We can also see what looks to be the Note 20 Ultra’s volume rocker and power button located on the right side of the device, similar to the S20. On last year’s Note 10 they were positioned to the left of the screen. Jimmy Is Promo also claims that the phone’s S...

Uber is launching an on-demand grocery delivery service in Latin America and Canada, the company announced on Tuesday. It’s Uber’s first major move into the competitive world of online grocery shopping since acquiring Cornershop, a leading online grocery provider in Chile, Mexico, Peru, Canada, Brazil, and Colombia. Grocery delivery will be available through both Uber’s main app and its Uber Eats app. Customers will see food delivery available from local grocery stores and will be able to receive their orders “in as little as one to two hours,” according to Uber Eats head of product Daniel Danker. The service is available starting today in 19 cities across Latin America and Canada. Later this month, it will be available in the US, Danker said. And when it launches, it will be included in U...

TikTok says it will stop offering its social video app in Hong Kong after the region adopted a new national security law granting expanded powers to the mainland Chinese government. “In light of recent events, we’ve decided to stop operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong,” a spokesperson tells Axios. Global tech companies operating in Hong Kong have expressed concern that the new law could force them to comply with China’s draconian censorship standards and possibly send user data to the mainland. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have already stopped processing requests for user data from the Hong Kong government. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a major Chinese internet company. But it has been at pains to differentiate the Western app from its parent and Douyin, the Chinese version of the pl...

Newly independent Xiaomi spin-off Poco has announced its latest smartphone, further broadening the brand beyond the Poco F1’s initial pitch of high specs for low prices. Like the X2, the M2 Pro is more of a mid-range affair: it’s basically a tweaked version of Xiaomi’s global Redmi Note 9 Pro that’s aimed at the Indian market. No-one will mistake the M2 Pro’s spec sheet for that of a flagship, but it could be a compelling option for customers who prioritize battery life. There’s a 5,000mAh battery with a 33W fast charger included in the box; Poco says it should provide a 50-percent charge in 30 minutes. Combined with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G processor, I’d expect this phone to last a pretty long time. The M2 Pro has a 6.67-inch 1080p LCD with a 16-megapixel hole-punch selfie camera. Th...

Google, Facebook, and Twitter are pausing the processing of data requests from the Hong Kong government as they review a new security law that went into effect on July 1st. Google put its pause into place as soon as the law took effect last Wednesday. “[W]hen the law took effect, we paused production on any new data requests from Hong Kong authorities,” a Google spokesperson told The Verge in an email, “and we’ll continue to review the details of the new law,” the spokesperson said. Twitter also halted its handling of government requests as of July 1st, with Facebook announcing its pause on Monday, The New York Times reported. Social media platforms typically produce private user information in response to valid court orders, depending on the legal process in various countries. But under t...

Google is rolling out a dark mode for its Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps on Android starting today. The tech giant says all Android users will gain access to the dark theme within the next two weeks. Users can activate the dark theme on Docs, Sheets, or Slides by going to the respective app’s settings. Google also says that the apps will automatically use your system theme, meaning if your device already has dark theme enabled, you will not have to enable it manually in these apps. Last year, Google promised to deliver dark mode to all of its first-party apps. It’s slowly added dark mode to a number of apps in the year since, including the Google app, Gmail, and Google Calendar, though some apps such as Google Maps do not have dark mode on iOS. In the last several years, dark mode has been ...